


2292

by CopperCaravan



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: F/M, Family Dynamics, Far Harbor, Post-Canon, Reunions, railroad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-03-02 02:36:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13308630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperCaravan/pseuds/CopperCaravan
Summary: Years after Tens left the Commonwealth for Far Harbor, Deacon is finally able to catch up with her. Except that maybe he still doesn't quite have his shit together. Also, the kids go camping, which is inadvisable given the state of the Acadia camp grounds.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going down with this dysfunctional ship. And so is Deacon. I mean he has no idea how to man a boat.  
> Also note that my survivor is actually nonbinary but A. AO3 still doesn't haven't a box for that and B. she uses she/her pronouns in addition to and more often than they/them.

Nick did warn him that this wouldn’t be easy.

There’s two people on the dock before Deacon’s even brought the boat to a full stop. He’s barely hopped off and said “hiya” before one’s telling him to board right back on and leave.

“Allen—”

“Nah, Avery, not today.” The man—Allen, presumably—isn’t _quite_ pointing his gun at Deacon, but he’s already got the hammer pulled back and ready to go. “Whatever you want, mainlander, you ain’t gonna find it here. Go back where you came from. Far Harbor’s got nothin’ for ya.”

He’d beg to differ, but there is the gun to consider.

“Mariner wouldn’t want you acting like this, Allen. Not after all that with Dalton.”

Allen scowls, then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand before he spits on the ground at Deacon’s feet. Real charmer, this one. But he does holster the gun at least.

“Captain Avery,” says the other, stepping forward with her hand out. Deacon shakes it, almost automatically. Handshakes are… well, a hell of a thing in his line of work. Used to be, anyway. “We don’t get many mainlanders out here, is all,” she continues. “When we do, we usually know they’re coming. What brings you this far out?”

“Actually, I’m looking for another mainlander. Short woman, ‘bout yea high?” He brings his hand to his chest, one corner of his mouth turning down a bit at the somewhat falsified description; he’s just got no clue how much she’d have told any of these people about herself. Short woman is about the closest he can get without treading on ground that isn’t his to walk. “Name’s Tens? Or—”

_Wanderer,_ he thinks. _Maybe you call her Wanderer too._

But of course not. “I hear she moved up here a few years ago; just wanted to catch up.”

Avery doesn’t much react to that, but _Allen._ Oh, Allen’s brow knits together like someone’s just pissed in his sugar bombs. Just for a second.

“Don’t got nobody on the island by that name,” he says roughly. “Sorry you wasted your trip, but I reckon you ought t’ head back now.”

The thing is though, Deacon knows she’s here. It’s not hearsay, not some gut-feeling. He knows. Nick visits. Often. And Deacon knows, without a doubt, that Tens is here. And gun or no gun, he’s not leaving ‘til he sees her.

“Well, I’m sure you’ve at least met my other pal, right? Synth? Real… sorta old, but still kinda shiny, you know? Nick Valentine? Detective? Trench coat, hat, the whole deal?”

Avery nods, taps her chin. “Oh yeah; that fella’s the only one what comes up here regular. Don’t know about the person you’re looking for, but the detective always heads over to Longfellow’s, over past the docks there.”

“Avery!” Allen’s not quite yelling—probably not the smartest thing to do out here, or anywhere, really—but he’s close and Deacon’s getting the impression that this guy’s temper doesn’t do anybody any favors. “We don’t know this guy; you can’t just hand out Longfellow’s business to any mainland stranger. Dalton—”

“Dalton can handle it if it needs handling. Why don’t you go soak your head and cool off, huh?” It’s less a suggestion and more an order, though Deacon can’t quite tell how much sway the title of “Captain” really holds.

Allen takes one last hard look at Deacon before stomping off, not so quietly muttering “You best not cause no trouble here.”

“Seems like a fun guy at parties,” Deacon tries. Avery only shakes her head a bit.

“Don’t mind him; he’s still growing out of that aggressive, hormonal teenager phase. We reckon it’ll only take another twenty years or so to work itself out. Now,” she points out toward the edge of the dock and Deacon can only barely make out land in the dense fog over the water. “Longfellows’ place is out there. I don’t suggest swimming though. Come on.” She turns and waves him along behind her as she walks up the stairs to the dock proper, where a few buildings are sat squashed together. He can hear music playing low from one of them, something a little familiar.

Avery leads him through some sort of walled gate, tapping the outside as she passes through the threshold. “Mariner’s Watch,” she mutters, so low he can barely hear, then, to him “You’ll want to take this road down a ways ‘til you reach the old grocer’s, then you can follow the land bridge out to the island. I’d tell you to get yourself settled on the docks for the night, grab a drink and all that, but the tide’s already coming in and you can’t bring a boat this far in. You miss the land bridge and you’re swimming or you’re stuck ‘til it goes back out.”

He nods, holding the information in the most accessible part of his brain. He’s been trying to make an effort _not_ to remember every single detail about every single thing.

“This woman you mentioned—haven’t heard the name before but if anybody knows anything about the detective, it’ll be Dalton.”

“Thanks,” he says. It seems a trite thing to say, all things considered, but there’s no real way he can think to communicate _I miss my friend and I need to see her and any lead you give me is better than what I had before please tell me she’s ok, please, please, please._

“Mm-hmm. Oh, and maybe I don’t need to tell you this,” she calls after him, “but keep careful out there; fog’s rolled back a bit these last couple of years but it’s still plenty dangerous.”

If Tens is really here—and she is, she is, she has to be—then he figures there’s a whole different level of danger on this island. He holds his hand up, a not-quite-wave behind him, and then sticks both in his pockets. Nice ambience for a stroll anyway.

~~~

About twenty minutes later, he reaches what could cautiously be called the beach of the promised Longfellow Island. The last three inches or so of his jeans are wet, to say nothing of his socks. It’s perhaps the most uncomfortable he’s felt since Carrington almost hugged him goodbye. The fog and humidity don’t help with that either.

There’s dogs barking somewhere nearby and he can hear something clanging too—something metallic, evenly measured. A hammer? The farther inland he gets, the more he can begin to make out the chatter and the whirring hum of a generator.

“Head ‘round the back of the cabin,” a woman’s voice calls out.

His mouth goes dry and he ruffles a hand through his hair without thought. Deep breaths, all that. Just one foot in front of another, just heading ‘round the back of the cabin, just finally going to see her after too many years apart, too many years of him trying to catch up.

He could open with finger guns. _Hey._

He absolutely shouldn’t.

_I missed you,_ he could say. _Did you miss me too?_

He rounds the corner of the little wooden shack and nearly smacks face first into the side of a crudely made, very unsteady, wooden ladder.

“Careful there,” she says, her feet level with his chin. He looks up at her—finally, _finally_ —expecting… something. Sun beams falling in a halo around her hair, a smile, a punch in the face maybe, but _connection. Her._

But he finds someone else.

“Who’re you?” She hops down from the ladder in one go and with the sun out of his eyes, it’s obvious. This isn’t her. He can’t believe he mistook some stranger’s voice for hers. But then, they did tell him they’d never met Tens. They did tell him that.

“Dalton?”

She huffs, almost a laugh but clearly she thinks he’s stupid, not funny. “Bertha,” she corrects, eyeing him. “I’m only gonna ask one more time: who’re you?”

“J.D.,” he says, before he can even think to stop himself. “Smith. From the Commonwealth.”

She cocks her hip and rests her hammer over her shoulder, screws up her mouth to one side, thinking. “And what’re you wanting with the Longfellows, then? Ain’t never seen you up here before, so you mustn’t be no friend of the family.”

Ouch.

He hitches his thumb back toward the main dock. “Your Captain Avery told me Dalton would know something about a friend of mine; just wanted to get some information.”

“Hmm.” She pauses, just watching him. It’s strangely unnerving, being watched by this girl. She doesn’t watch people the way he does—he never wants them to know he’s paying attention; she’s anything but shy about it.

“Is, uh—Is Dalton here?”

“Of course.”

A pause.

“Could you tell them I’m here?”

She laughs, once, short and harsh. “Dalton knows you’re here. Don’t nothin’ or nobody step foot on this place without that for sure. Been watching you since at least you found the shore.”

He’s not sure how to respond. After another awkward beat of silence, he just settles for “oh.”

She watches him for a moment more before rolling her eyes and hitching up her pants—hand-me-downs, no doubt, still too loose around her thin waist. “You just wait here,” she says, then she turns around and walks away, up a little hill to his right and into another shack. This one, he notes, has a radio dish on the roof. That explains the music then. Pretty damn impressive.

He shifts on his feet, back and forth, a step to the left, to the right, shuffle, shuffle, shuffle. Runs one hand through his hair again, fingers the lighter in his pocket with the other.

Not soon enough, Bertha reemerges from the radio shack, another person, only slightly taller, walking behind her. Hair the color of wheat, but so much longer, bunched up in a messy bun at the base of her neck. Hard-won muscle still shifting under the skin, a bit more tan, a bit more worn with new bruises and scars. Lips still hesitant to curl into a smile, though her eyes are so much softer now. He knows her then. Right then.

When she stops before him, she puts a fist on her hip and looks at him, expectant.

_What are you waiting for?_

“J.D. Smith here,” says Bertha, gesturing to him, “says Captain Avery sent him over.”

“J.D. Smith.” Tens says it. Tens. It’s her. It is.

Isn’t it?

It can’t have been so long. It can’t…

She holds out her hand. Tens hated handshakes. “Dalton,” she says. “Welcome to the Island, J.D. Smith.”

~~~


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know canon says Shaun doesn't age but that's fucked up (and it makes no sense, as with the inability of synths to gain and lose weight like that's??? not how organic material works??? doesn't matter if it's grown in a lab or in a womb that's just not biology???) so I ignore that. Because it's dumb.

She knows who he is. Of course she does.

He let his hair grow out—only a few inches but the ginger suits him. He hasn’t tanned at all, though his few, scattered freckles have multiplied a bit. His hands are rougher, which makes her think more farming and less sniping. The lack of bruising under his eyes suggests that he’s actually been sleeping.

Really the only surprise is that he didn’t come up with anything better to tell Bertha than “J.D. Smith.”

She’s different too, though. It’s not just longer, unshorn hair or tanned skin or the way the island has wrapped her in itself (these days, no matter how clean she gets, she has the scent of the harbormen: brine). Far Harbor carries the same dangers as the Commonwealth—maybe more—but it gives her something the Commonwealth never did, never could.

She jerks her chin up and tilts her head toward her house. It’s a cabin, really, some twenty or thirty odd yards from Longfellow’s house. Took a while to build the place up but the island isn’t lacking in wood.

“Come on,” she says to him. Then she looks down, quickly, at his feet. “We’ll get you some dry socks.”

He shoves his hands in his pockets. “Uh, thanks.”

~~~

She remembers porches in a sort of abstract way—which, honestly, is the same way she “remembers” most things before the war—and this can’t really be called a proper porch but it does have two chairs and a rail to hang Deacon’s socks on.

It’s quiet for a while and they sit side by side, staring forward toward the shoreline at that old boat still half sunk into the sand. Moments like this would’ve felt awkward a few years ago.

She can see Deacon fidgeting a bit out of the corner of her eye, so maybe it’s still a little awkward.

“So. Dalton.” He nods his head too many times and steeples his fingers. Not actively monitoring his body language, that’s new too. “Been here long?”

One corner of her mouth twists up. “Few years.”

“Nice, uh, setup you have here. Livin’ the island life, huh?”

“You could say that. More like surviving the island life, but that’s not so different from everywhere else.”

“Hmm.” He wiggles his toes.

She lets the silence carry. That’s something the island gave her: silence.

Nick and Mac, they’d been great about that: her losing words when she needed them. But here, she doesn’t really have to reach for them at all. Debby, Teddy, Jule—they can bear the silence like it’s not a burden at all. All the things she doesn’t say don’t matter here. There is no Original, no X-whatever, no Tens. There’s not even a Mainlander anymore. Just Dalton, and Dalton is just like everybody else.

“I, uh…” He covers his mouth with his fist and coughs. “I came—”

The back door of the house is slung open and _bangs_ against the wall, two lanky boys almost falling through the threshold on top of each other in their hurry.

They start talking—and escalate to yelling—at the same time, but what it all basically boils down to is this: “Mom!”

She holds up her hands, palms toward them, and they stop. A temporary truce, at least.

“Whatever it is, I’ve told you two to work it out yourselves. You do your own prep, no help from me _or_ from Grandpa.” Though she seriously doubts Longfellow hasn’t helped them with _something._ Old Pushover, more like. “Now, is whatever you’re fighting about related to anything _other_ than your trip?”

Shaun looks at Deacon, pauses, but says nothing; he just frowns and his brows draw together. Donny shuffles a bit, then, timidly, says “No.”

She doesn’t say anything else, just shakes her head and points to the door. Shaun rolls his eyes, but the two of them head back inside, leaving the door open behind them.

She exhales, rolls her shoulders. When she looks over at Deacon, he’s still watching the door.

“My sons,” she says, as though he doesn’t know.

He whispers something to himself that she doesn’t quite catch. Then, a bit louder than he likely intended, “I mean. Kids. Nice kids you’ve got there.” He swivels to face her, as much as his stationary chair will allow. “Bertha, too?”

She shakes her head, but smiles and closes her eyes. “No, Bertha’s all her own. She does spend a lot of time around here though, her and her brother. ” When she looks back at him, he’s facing the doorway again; she’s not sure if he’s really hearing her and, not at all for the first time—even just today—she wishes she knew what he was thinking.

~~~

“So what brings you out here?” Tens— _Dalton_ —asks. It grates, the uncertainty. He’s not used to it.

And he doesn’t know how to answer her question. _You. You, you, you. Always you. Only you._

He keeps his eyes straight ahead, stares at the washed up fishing boat and the tide rising higher and higher along the coastline. To his right, there’s her. To his left, there’s an open door leading to her home, her sons—children that could’ve been—that were almost—

He keeps his eyes straight ahead, not really seeing the fishing boat or the sea or the empty skyline.

“Just, um, trying to catch up with an old friend.”

Nick never mentioned any of _this_. No cabin by the sea, no Bertha and her brother, no Dalton. And he wonders if that was all Nick. Or if it was her, if she didn’t want him to know about any of it. He wonders what all this would look like if he’d come with her when she’d asked. Or if she’d stayed. Or if—

Something crashes inside the house and he can hear Donny yelling. “Shaun, stop it!”

“Goddammit.” Dalton yanks herself out of her chair and heads inside, seemingly forgetting for just a second that Deacon—that J.D. is even here. That doesn’t stop him from quietly following her inside.

Her cabin is small, which is unsurprising. The room they enter has a few chairs shoved together around a small table. There’s a radio, though it’s off. A bed—hers, he assumes—is shoved against the far wall and there’s a ladder next to it with blankets slung over every rung. If he leans far enough to the right, he can see inside the only other room: two small beds and a table, piled high with various toys and tools.

Most importantly, in the middle of this room, Shaun and Donny stand over a pile of stuff yanking a backpack back and forth between them.

“What the hell is going on in here?”

At her voice—which, he notes, isn’t raised even a little bit—the boys stop cold.

Donny loosens his hold on his strap of the backpack. “Shaun dumped out all my stuff!”

“He’s not packing it right!”

They’re both so much taller than they were. He was there when Shaun ran up to her in the relay room, the first time he called her “Mom,” the moment he wrapped his arms around her waist and just melted into her. He remembers the weeks following that, when the Railroad hunkered down in HQ, the way Tens would pace back and forth and swear to god she didn’t know what to do and beg Tom to just tell her the answer like it was a math problem, like it was as easy as cracking a courser chip.

And he remembers the three days he spent with with Donny, on the way back to Sanctuary from Boston, the way Donny talked and talked and talked about animals and his old house and the ghoul whale slash sea monster slash submarine. He remembers when Tens elbowed his arm and whispered “This kid reminds me of you.” He remembers finally making it back to Sturges’ house and how Donny and Shaun seemed to fit together instantly and seamlessly.

And afterward, he left. And she left. And he doesn’t even know if either of the boys asked about him, if Donny wondered whether Deacon would return, if Shaun said he would miss him.

 _It wasn’t like it was easy!_ He wants to tell her.

Would they know him, if he confessed? Does she know him now?

Hell, does he know _her_? He knows Tens, sure. But Dalton? Dalton who apparently runs a radio station on an island, Dalton who has a cabin by the sea and all the fish monsters that live in it, Dalton with two teenage sons and a Bertha and a Bertha’s Brother, Dalton who looks him in the eye and sees J.D. Smith.

“Drop it,” she says firmly, finger pointing first to the boys and then to the pile of supplies on the floor between them. They do.

“Shaun, you are not doing this so you can boss your brother around. You are a team. Act like it.” Shaun lightly kicks the closest thing to him (a folded tarp that flaps over the toe of his boot), but Tens doesn’t react, turning her face toward Donny now instead. “How do we work?”

“Efficiently,” he mumbles, in time with her answering her own question.

“And the same goes for packing: if you waste space, you waste resources and that can get you killed. When someone points out a fuck-up, you _think_ , you don’t just argue.”

“Yes, Mom.”

“Shaun?”

He huffs and stays silent for just a second, but then resigns. “Yes.”

“You three have to work together. Me and Grandpa argue all the time, but when we’re out what do we do?”

“Take care of each other.” The boys speak in a monotone unison and Deacon’s a bit taken aback by the whole exchange. She’s their _mother._

He taught Shaun things, for the few months they were together. He _cared_ about Shaun. There were days when he’d watch the kid take apart an old toaster or something and the strangest feeling would hit him right in the gut. He could see the three of them, in some vision of the future, in some reasonably assembled shack, listening to the radio, doing the whole “family” thing. It was the same way he’d catch himself pulling her closer to him in bed when she was still sleeping, the same way he knew the Railroad would eventually end one way or the other, the same way he’d picture a future Commonwealth that was just _better._ It was a vague feeling that he wouldn’t let himself hold onto, that he had to force himself to push away because the world could never really change. And god knows he couldn’t either, could he?

In none of those almost-daydreams did he picture anything like this: a teenager arguing with his parents, a mother putting her foot down and teaching her kids to watch out for each other, a—a father who stood behind her and didn’t know what to say.

When she came here—god when she’d said she was leaving it was like a punch in the stomach, but one he’d been waiting for, one he’d earned—he’d had his theories. Recycled versions of all the reasons he’d left Capital Wasteland, mostly. It hadn’t occurred to him that maybe she was running _toward_ something instead of just running away from it.

He wonders, again, how the landscape of this moment would be different if he’d come here five years ago, if he’d been ready to run toward this with her.

And he wonders if there’s room on this island for him now.


End file.
